Susitna Dam Proposal

There's a proposal in the works to dam the Susitna River. It's definitely something to keep tabs on.

http://www.canoekayak.com/whitewater-kayak/stopping-the-susitna/

First Days on Minibus

The rumors were true. Minibus was in.

At 7 p.m. on a Friday night it was decision time. Should I stick around for Easter, or should I make the long, lonely drive to the Ottawa to surf the most fun wave I've ever been on.

Kind of a no-brainer I guess.

So I loaded up the dog and a playboat and hit the road.

We rolled in around 2 a.m.

There's something magical about the Ottawa Valley. As soon as you pass Renfrew and see the rolling farmlands, you know it's always going to be a good trip. The only problem with the place is leaving it. It was my first time surfing Minibus. I kind of figured I would never make it up for the spot since it's usually in during prime creeking season in Vermont. For better or for worse, there was no creeking season in Vermont this year, so I hit the road early. Now I don't think I'll ever miss a chance to make it up when this thing's in and I can go. The whole aspect of being up there early season when the water's freezing cold and high and it's a relatively small group of people is just great.

That said, the first day I pretty much gaped it up trying to figure out the rope to tow onto the wave. Day two, I started to figure it out, but it's kind of one of those things where by the time you feel comfortable, you're too tired to do anything.

If nothing else, it's just great to hang out on the island and watch the show. Here are a couple choice pics from the weekend.

Dan Caldwell

Dane Jackson

Here's some video footage: https://vimeo.com/40101311

Low Water Quebec Trip

Since winter never really happened in the East, spring didn't either. With no snowpack left and no rain to speak of, I headed north with a couple of kids to check out some classic park and huck spots. We hiked up and ran the Mastigouche, which was definitely more fun and more stompy than I expected. We got a little scared and decided not to run the Petit Bostonnais. It just didn't seem like the time to do it, so we tucked tail and went back to run the Shawinigan an hour or so to the south. All told, there's some pretty great point and shoot slides in Quebec, even when nothing else is running.

Here's a link to some helmet cam footage: https://vimeo.com/39611164.

Give Thanks

It's been a rough fall in New England. I got a job. I work too much, and it never rains.
I took two days of my meager vacation time to visit the in-laws in Pennsylvania, and, you might say, hit the jackpot. After driving late into the night, I got up early Wednesday to head to the Delaware Water Gap.
I met up with Jared Seiler, Eric Sorenson, and Eli Landis at Hornbeck's Creek. We hit some low water, but for a first-time run down Pennsylvania's most classic creek, I couldn't have asked for more. After a canyon with a bunch of sweet slides, we made it to David's. One of the most fun drops anywhere. It's like a sliding 20-footer into a 40-foot semi-vertical slide--super fun.
Then we headed over to Raymondskill, which held a bit more water. Flirting with Disaster--the true climax of the run--is pretty nerve wracking. It's like a 20-foot skate ramp into a huge, crashing diagonal wave next to a wall, into a six-footer. The whole thing is like slow motion. You slide off the lip. Rocket through the transition. Then white out. It's sick. The second drop on Raymondskill Falls is pretty sweet, too.
It's been a good Thanksgiving.

Eric below David's. 

Jared on the first drop of Raymondskill.

Jared dropping into Flirting with Disaster.

You can barely see Jared rocketing out of the transition.

 Eli dropping in.

Jared on Raymondskill Falls.

Green River Flow Study

We did a little flow study on the Green River in Vermont the other week. Here's the link with some great shots from Scott Martin.

Groveling and Reflection on the Magpie

Wilderness. That's why you go to the Magpie. The whitewater is really fun, and it is a great adventure, but the real reason to make the trip is the experience of not seeing another human being for five days.

We had been planning our trip for a good bit of the summer. Our crew, which started with around a dozen guys, whittled down to three by the time we left New England to make the fifteen-hour drive north to Sept Iles. The Magpie lies in Quebec's Cote Nord region a couple drainages away from the Romaine and Petit Mecatina rivers. It is, I have heard, a step down in difficulty from either of those runs. Despite its more laid back nature, however, you remain more than 100 miles from any semblance of civilization in places, and the only way to get in is by float plane.

So last week, Adam Herzog, Jonathan Baker, and I hitched a ride with Labrador Air Safari to Lac Vital--the starting point for the West Magpie. The trip consists of about two to three days on the West Magpie, a grueling lake paddle, and about another fifty kilometers on the Lower Magpie. We didn't see anyone in the five days we were on the water.

None of us had much experience with multi-day, self-support trips like this, so we were kind of reinventing the wheel. As we loaded the float plane in Sept Iles, the charismatic guy who organized the flight asked us if we had any bear spray. After a moment of us looking at each other in a slight state of panic he said (with a French Canadian accent) "if it discharge during the flight, everyone dies!" We didn't bring any bear spray.

After a somewhat adrenaline-filled landing, we watched civilization soar away, and the five-day adventure began.

The West Branch of the Magpie is definitely one of the most high-quality rivers I have run. You can basically go as big as you want, but the remoteness tends to steer you toward more conservative lines. The first day we paddled a great section of Class IV-V big water. Day two was pretty much all flatwater, and day three involved another great stretch of whitewater. We portaged the last Class V-VI gorge and spotted the only other wildlife--a healthy-looking black bear--at the end. He was about as curious about us as we were about him.

That night we celebrated our successful stretch on the West Branch by finishing the last of the coveted whiskey we brought and prepared for two long days. Lake Magpie was probably the most grueling day I have ever experienced3 kayaking. A serious headwind slowed us down, and thirteen hours later we finally made it to camp on the Lower Magpie.

We finished up the Lower in another long day. The whitewater was surprisingly good, with the occasional death hole/portage. We took out at the dam at the end of the Lower on the wrong side of the river. All I could think about was beer and poutine and the fact that I will never bring four days worth of cous cous and dried vegetables on an overnighter. The dam and an asphalt-manufacturing operation provided a harsh slap in the face after our serene wilderness drip. We choked on a cloud of smoke from the concrete mixer as we walked toward the bridge to our car.

At the end, we all had a new appreciation for the Cote Nord region and one of the last truly wild places left. The Magpie, Romaine, and Petit Mecatina are all either being dammed or have the potential to be dammed. Some of our friends had run the Romaine River a few weeks earlier and described it as "not a wilderness trip." The Romaine Complex of dams has essentially devastated the river. There is already one dam at the very end of the Magpie, and the river is listed on Hydro Quebec's 2009-2013 strategic plan as a potential dam site. The Petit Mecatina is listed as well. I had a difficult time finding information on exactly the status of these rivers, although I have heard the Magpie may be safe.

The situation in Quebec, in general, presents an interesting quagmire. On the one hand, hydro power is "renewable" and produces very little carbon emissions. There is a strong argument for damming rivers to provide energy to Quebec and New England rather than getting our energy from sources like coal fired power plants or Vermont Yankee--our aging nuclear power facility which has problems of its own. On the other hand, when the entire East Coast has basically been developed, Quebec could preserve some of the last, best wilderness areas in the world. Instead, Hydro Quebec is building dams. In addition to the potentially harmful environmental effects from building dams like: methane gas and carbon dioxide emissions; altering river flow and ecosystem fragmentation; and sediment displacement, Hydro Quebec's systematic damming of rivers has flooded villages, destroyed traditional hunting and fishing grounds, and changed a way of life for the native Cree people in Quebec.


The bottom line, I suppose, is that meeting energy needs is an extremely complex problem, and we seem to jump to conclusions in deciding that things like large-scale hydro are "good"and "renewable." This really rings true once you experience the amazing wilderness that places like the Magpie have to offer. So I would highly recommend checking out the Magpie and the Cote Nord in general.


For more information on the region, check out: http://riversenses.blogspot.com. For information on running the Magpie, Alden Bird's book, Let It Rain, has a really good writeup (but for the record the river is more like 100 miles, not 100K).


Here are some photos of our trip, and I hope more people run this river, particularly the West Branch, because it is truly amazing.

Our shuttle rig.

Power lines as seen on the flight in.

 Adam running a rapid on the West Branch.

Jonathan in the runout on a West Branch rapid.

 Adam sneaking a rapid on the Lower. The hole on the right was huge, but it was nothing compared to what we saw later on.

Our friend the bear helping us scout the last rapid on the West Branch.

Starting the grueling lake paddle.

 Jon in a great rapid on the Lower.

Hopefully this video of the portage gives a sense of how powerful this river can be.

Keeping on

It has been a rough week for everyone here in New England. A week ago, we lost a pillar of our boating community when Boyce Greer died on the North Fork of the Payette in Idaho. I didn't really know Boyce personally, although I had paddled Class V with him a couple of times. It's been especially hard on some of the guys who had paddled with him for as long as some of the young boaters on the scene have been alive.

When something like this happens, it really makes everyone take a step back and think about why we do the things we do. There are no easy answers to the nagging questions surrounding mortality and the dangerous sport we do. On Saturday, I took the three and a half hour drive to the Raquette River in New York with my friend Adam. He was supposed to be running the North Fork with Boyce that day. I can only imagine the pain for these guys who have paddled together for so long in the tight-knit community here in New England.

We talked a little about the philosophy behind why we paddle Class V and rattled off name after name of people we knew who died on the river. There is a sense of guilt that we all have when we do something dangerous and get a thrill out of it, and I'm sure this gets exponentially worse once you have a family. There's always that voice in the back of your mind saying: "maybe I really shouldn't be doing this."

There are no two ways about it: running Class V is dangerous. It can be scary. If it was easy and safe, everyone would do it. But it's not. It takes training, some athleticism, and more than a little grit. It is a crazy place to be out there on the edge pushing your abilities and keeping a calm head when you do it. But that's the point. Paddling difficult whitewater is about being alive. It is the most pure and true experience that I have ever known, and it has brought me more joy, pain, and satisfaction than anything else. So while it may be a little fringe to be out there running the hardest whitewater you think you are up to, it isn't crazy. It's life. And while we all need to be cognizant of the dangers and take care of each other on the river, we can't live our lives in fear.

As we stoically made our way to the river, we did what we always do: we went kayaking, and somehow things made a little more sense. 

We'll miss you Boyce.

 

Matt Young below the Tubs on some pensive laps on the Raquette.